Page 51 of Never Say Yes To A Stranger

It could be over before he knows how wonderful it can really be. Before the glass heart bursts wide open and learns to let the sunshine and feeling and warmth back in. Even if it hurts to feel those things, it’s worth it. It is. I want so badly for him to see that and believe it. If I could, I would stick myself into his heart andvacuum out all the bad and all the wrong that’s ever been done to him. I would make him see that he is wanted, even if he was given up at birth. He was loved so deeply, and he could be loved again. He could learn how to manage the pain if he chose love.

Isn’t love always supposed to win?

Or is that just for fairytales?

I want this to be like a fairytale. I want his story and my story to have happy endings, even if they’re not together. For the love of all watching-the-stars-on-a-greasy-roof-on-a-perfect-summer-night, I want to see what it would be like together. This can’t be the end.

Beau might be calm, and he might be breathing steadily and regularly. He might be trained for this, and he might be brave enough to figure he can talk his way out of this as a tactic, but getting Aiden worked up and wild isn’t going to help. I know that. But Beau doesn’t.

“Okay.” I take one step to the side, and there. Yes, I can see Aiden’s face now. Waxy and white with sweat beading his brow and a curled upper lip. There’s a ring around his pupils that isn’t right. Fear. He doesn’t want to be doing this. He truly is that desperate. “Aiden, look at me.”

Beau tries to sway his body, so Aiden can’t look at me. But I step to the side again so he can. I don’t look at Beau’s face. I know he’s furious. I know he’d try and signal for me to stop, to not say anything, and to just let him handle this.

But I can’t do that.

I can’t take the chance that Aiden won’t do something he’ll regret forever, even if it happens by accident. I can’t take the chance that this beautiful man won’t have a future, a life, and a chance at happiness he doesn’t even know exists. I want him to have that. I want it so badly that it makes me feel like I’m going to burst on the inside.

‘“Aiden, you’re right. His men were tracking you. Trying to get intel on what you did, trying to prove it was you. They want to send you to prison. And I did tell him everything. I wanted to clear my name. I wanted to have my old life back. I wanted to go home.”

Aiden’s thin lips press together, and a red stain appears on his cheeks. He’s not just scared now, he’s furious. I need him to be furious and to believe I’ll do anything he asks. I need him to put the gun down and let Beau go so this nightmare can end.

“I did all of that. I did. But I’ll do what you say. I’ll do it right now. I’ll go and drive to the police and turn myself in. I’ll say all of it was me. I’ll go to jail, and you can go free. I’ll do it all. Just please, don’t hurt this man. He has nothing to do with this. It’s one thing to threaten me into complying, but you can’t shoot him. If you do that, you’ll go to jail no matter what, and it won’t be for fraud or theft. It will be for murder. Not second degree but first.” I get my hands high where he can see them. I have to keep appealing to the fear that brought him here in the first place. “Please, Aiden. You need to listen to me.”

“You don’t care about me,” Aiden hisses, and there’s the slightest hitch in his voice. Rage. Is he seriously angry that our relationship didn’t work because I found out he’d been lying to me and using me, and I left? I choke down my own feelings about that, which all rise to the surface in a smothering fist wrapped around my throat.

“Our relationship is over.” That’s the truth, and he needs to hear it. “But this man didn’t have anything to do with that. He was trying to help me because I hired him to do that. Hate him or not, you need to dial it back. You need to take a breath. Let’s go downstairs. You can sit him on a chair and tie him up until you know you’re free to go. Leave him tied up. Just don’t kill him. There’s no future for you if you do that.”

“There’d be no future for him either,” Aiden shoots back. His voice changes, his face changes, and the hold on the gun changes. The angle tilts from Beau’s temple down lower, the barrel of the weapon brushing the shell of his ear. At the sight, my stomach lurches, and nausea twists violently inside me. “My fucking god, you care about him.” He didn’t know before, but now he does. I must be projecting it all over the place. “Your bodyguard? Seriously? You’re such a slut, Samandra. Such a cliched little—”

Beau moves so fast that Aiden is no match for his overwhelming strength. Beau has the training, but as he grabs the barrel of the gun and twists, he’s not just acting on adrenaline and instinct. He roars something incoherent as he whips to the side, slamming the gun down and getting his hand up and around Aiden’s wrist. A nasty crack of bones breaking punches through the stunned silence in the room, followed by a deafening pop.

I can’t blink. I can’t move or breathe. And I can’t register anything that’s happening.

I’m as useful as a shaking, trembling statue, even as the gun goes skittering across the floor.It went off. The gun went off.I can smell the charred metallic evil of it.

I finally break out of my shocked state and rush for the gun. It’s near my bed. I pick up the thing that’s heavy and warm from Aiden’s hand. It disgusts me to hold it, but I know enough to click the safety back on. Then, I stand there against the bed, holding the last thing on earth I ever want to touch as my hands shake with tremor after terrible tremor. They roll through me like a storm on the ocean. I’m just the little wooden vessel that doesn’t come out the other side of a long, rain-lashed night.

Beau is magnificent.

Once I get over myself and stop thinking about storms and sinking ships, I watch as he wrestles Aiden flat onto the floor.He gets Aiden’s hands above his head next and laces his wrists together with one of his huge palms. He’s probably three times as heavy as Aiden is, and there’s no kicking him off. There’s no fighting back or escape.

“Call the police,” Beau instructs me calmly. “Right now, please.”

I want to. I want this all over. I want Aiden to be where he can’t hurt me or Beau and where he can’t hurt a single other person ever again. I want the silence, stillness, and peace of this house back. I want to rush to Beau and tell him I’m sorry he very nearly got incredibly hurt because of me. He put his body between me and the threat, and then he immobilized said threat at what could have been a very great cost to himself. It could have cost him everything to keep me safe, and yet…he did.

The room still smells metallic.

Like blood.

I finally look down past Beau’s heaving shoulders. I look all the way down to the floor, where he’s basically kneeling on top of Aiden.

Down to the puddle of red spreading out ominously beneath them.

I have a burner phone downstairs, so I grasp the gun tightly and race to get it. Someone is hurt. I don’t know which one of them is bleeding.I don’t want anyone to die. Please. Please. Please let no one die.

I find the flip phone in the kitchen drawer and jam the SIM card into it to get it powered on. I call the police first, and I manage to control the sobs and hysteria long enough to give them my location and directions and to ask them to please send help. An ambulance. Someone has been shot. Someone is bleeding.

In my heart, I know it’s Beau. Because if it were Aiden, he’d be screaming and wailing. He’d be freaking out. Only Beau couldtake a bullet and remain so very quiet. Only Beau would ensure that, above all, the job got done.

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